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9711dddd342 PDF
9711dddd342 PDF
9711dddd342 PDF
Vortons
Alejandro GANGUI
DARC – Observatoire de Paris–Meudon, 92195 Meudon, France
arXiv:astro-ph/9711342v1 27 Nov 1997
Edgard GUNZIG
Université Libre de Bruxelles, CP231 1050 Bruxelles, Belgium
To appear in
Proceedings of the Eighth Marcel Grossmann Meeting
on General Relativity, Gravitation and Relativistic Field Theories.
22–27 June 1997, Jerusalem
1
Current–Carrying Cosmic String Loops Leading to Vortons
Alejandro GANGUI
DARC – Observatoire de Paris–Meudon, 92195 Meudon, France
Edgard GUNZIG
Université Libre de Bruxelles, CP231 1050 Bruxelles, Belgium
In this article we review recent work aimed at showing explicitly the influence of electro-
magnetic self corrections on the dynamics of a circular vortex line endowed with a current
at first order in the coupling between the current and the self–generated EM-field.
2
the case of neutral currents) group and, at an energy scale ∼ m∗ , the generation of a
current–carrying condensate in the vortex makes the tension no longer constant, but
dependent on the magnitude of the current, with the general feature that T ≤ m2 ≤
U , breaking therefore the degeneracy of the Nambu–Goto strings. The fact that
|Σ| 6= 0 in the string results in that either electromagnetism (in the case that the
associated gauge vector Aµ is the e.m. potential) or the global U(1) is spontaneously
broken in the core, with the resulting Goldstone bosons carrying charge up and down
the string. The invariance of the Lagrangian with respect to local changes in the
phase ϕ of the current carrier field Σ = |Σ(x, y)| exp[iϕ(z, t)] is expressed by the
conservation of the Noether current 2|Σ|2 (∂ µ ϕ−eAµ ), where we implicitly consider a
string along the z direction and where the physically relevant scalar boson amplitude
cannot depend on the internal string coordinates, a = z, t. In order to get the total
macroscopic current one just needs to integrate over the string cross section (taking
Aµ ∼ const in the core) to get the current za = 2Σ̃(∂a ϕ − eAa ) ≡ 2Σ̃ϕ|a , where
R
Σ̃ = core dxdy|Σ|2 . In the macroscopic string description a key rôle is played by the
squared of the gradient of ϕ in characterizing the local state of the string through
w = γ ab ϕ|a ϕ|b . The dynamics of the system is determined by the Lagrangian
L{w}. From it we get the conserved particle current vector za = −∂L/∂ϕ|a =
K−1 ϕ|a = 2Σ̃ϕ|a , where we define K−1 ≡ −2dL/dw which is in turn proportional
to the amplitude of the condensate Σ̃. From the above middle equality we get
L{w} = −m2 − ϕ|a ϕ|a /2K = −m2 − w/2K which, for weak currents (small w)
coincides (recall K → 1 for w → 0) with the generalization of the Nambu–Goto
model given by Carter and Peter in 1995: L{w} = −m2 − 12 m2∗ ln 1 + w/m2∗ .
3
2.5 10
1 0 9
20
2.0 8
λq =10
2
1.5 6
2
U/m* and T/m*
5 MS
Y
2
1.0 4
λq =1
2
3
MS
0.5 2 MV
λq <0.1
2
1
0.0 0
−7 −5 −3 −1 1 3 5 7 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
ν l
Figure 1: Left panel: U (upper set of curves) and T (lower set of curves) versus ν.
Increasing values of λq 2 enlarges the corresponding curve. Right panel: Variations of the
self potential Υ. Three curves are shown showing the qualitatively different cases in which
the loop either reaches stability (thick curve) or eventually decays (light curves).
string equation of state with the e.m. self correction λq 2 , which we plot in Fig 1
(left panel) as
p a function of the sign–preserving square root of the state parameter
ν = Sign(w) |w|. It is interesting to see that the inclusion of self correction allows
larger currents along the string before reaching the saturation point.
Now, regarding the motion of circular vortex rings in flat space, a previous
analysis of one √ of us shows that the variation of the string radius follows from
the equation M 1 − ṙ2 = Υ(r), where M is the string’s total mass and Υ(r) is
the self potential on which the string’s radius evolves. Υ itself can be written in
terms of conserved quantities such as the number of carrier particles in the loop Z
and the topologically conserved (in the 2D worldsheet) winding number N of the
carrier–field’s phase ϕ around the loop. It is an easy task to derive the form of the
ring radius in terms of these conserved quantities, r2 ∝ Z 2 (b2 − K2 )/K2 χ, where
b ≡ |N/Z|. This tells us that the nature of the current (whether χ is positive or
negative) depends on the sign of b2 − K2 , where b characterizes a particular current
state of the string and K is given by the particular macroscopic model (through
its Lagrangian) including e.m. self corrections. What one finds from local stability
considerations is that the range of variation of K is λq 2 ≤ K ≤ 1 + λq 2 for χ ≤ 0,
whereas 1 + λq 2 ≤ K ≤ 2 + λq 2 in the χ ≥ 0 case. Therefore, it is only possible
for χ to be positive if b ≥ 1 + λq 2 , and negative otherwise. As the critical value
bc = 1 + λq 2 was unity in the decoupled case, we see that interestingly enough e.m.
corrections can modify the nature of the current for a given set of Z and N .
We plot the variations of the self potential Υ with the ring’s circumference ℓ
and the e.m. self coupling λq 2 for (m/m∗ )2 = 1 = b in the right panel of Fig 1. The
thick curve, a ‘safe’ stable zone in parameter space is shown. For all regimes, this
zone is limited to λq 2 ≤ b ≤ λq 2 + 2, a condition which is increasingly restrictive
as λq 2 increases, and may even forbid vorton formation altogether for a very large
coupling, with interesting consequences for the vorton excess problem.
Extensive list of references is given in papers hep-ph/9609401 and hep-ph/9705204.
A.G. thanks the British Council for partial finantial support. This work was par-
tially supported by EEC grants Nr PSS*0992 and CI1*CT94-0004. We would like
to thank C.Boehm, B.Carter and P.Peter for enlightening discussions.